HISTORY, PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE CONFESSIONAL STATE: DAVID CALDERWOOD AND HIS WRITINGS IN THE
POST-REFORMATION SCOTLAND
A Master’s Thesis
by
MUHAMMED BURAK ÖZDEMĐR
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BĐLKENT UNIVERSITY
ANKARA September 2007
HISTORY, PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE CONFESSIONAL STATE: DAVID CALDERWOOD AND HIS WRITINGS IN THE
POST-REFORMATION SCOTLAND
The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of
Bilkent University
by
MUHAMMED BURAK ÖZDEMĐR
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS
in
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BĐLKENT UNIVERSITY
ANKARA September 2007
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in History.
——————————— Assoc. Prof. Cadoc D.A. Leighton Supervisor
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in History.
——————————— Asst. Prof. Paul Latimer
Examining Committee Member
I certify that I have read this thesis and have found that it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in History.
——————————— Asst. Berrak Burçak
Examining Committee Member
Approval of the Institute of Economics and Social Sciences
——————————— Prof. Dr. Erdal Erel
ABSTRACT
HISTORY, PRESBYTERIANISM AND THE CONFESSIONAL STATE: DAVID CALDERWOOD AND HIS WRITINGS IN THE POST-REFORMATION
SCOTLAND
Özdemir, Muhammed Burak M.A., Department of History Supervisor: Dr. C. D. A Leighton
September 2007
Thanks to recently developed methodologies in history writing, the analysis of relatively lesser known figures in the area of intellectual history, placing them in their historical context has become important in historical studies. The investigation pursued in this thesis explains a seventeenth-century politico-religious context of Scotland, through the writings of a leading Presbyterian minister of the period, David Calderwood. Here Calderwood emerges as an important representative of the expression of a confessional identity. His ideas are interesting enough to refute the claims of some historians that religion began to be excluded from all intellectual debates of this period. His works mainly reflect a radical Presbyterian stance, opposing that of the Episcopalians. The elucidation of the aspects of this radical Presbyterianism illustrates how the early modern Scottish discussion between Presbyterians and Episcopalians had a constitutive role in establishing an identity.
History was a useful intellectual tool for Calderwood to offer a solution to this debate. But, historical precedents could provide guidance only in so far as God’s providential plan was perceived in them, as directing the course of all events, and justifying religious and moral commands—in fact, Presbyterianism—now identifiable with the nation’s historical path.
Key Words: David Calderwood, Reformation, Seventeenth Century, Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, Historiography, Scottish Identity.
ÖZET
TARĐH, PRESBĐTERYENĐZM VE DEVLET: REFORMASYON SONRASI
ĐSKOÇYA’DA DAVĐD CALDERWOOD’UN ESERLERĐ
Özdemir, Muhammed Burak Yüksek Lisans, Tarih Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Dr. C. D. A. Leighton
Eylül 2007
Tarih yazımı alanındaki son gelişmeler neticesinde, son yıllarda düşünce tarihi çalışmalarının nisbeten önemsiz atfedilmiş şahsiyetlere yöneldiğini ve onların gerçek tarihsel bağlamları içerisinde ele alındıklarını görmekteyiz. Bu tez, on yedinci yüzyılda Đskoçya’nın nasıl dini ve siyasi bir bağlama sahip olduğunu göstermek için, dönemin önemli din adamlarından birisi olan David Calderwood’un eserlerini incelemektedir. Calderwood bu tarihsel bağlam içerisinde dini bir kimlik algısı inşa etmektedir. Onun eserleri aslında, günümüz tarihçilerinin on yedinci yüzyılda dinin çoğu tartışmanın dışına itildiği yönündeki inançlarının ne kadar da hatalı olduğunu göstermek adına oldukça ilgi çekicidir. Temel olarak Calderwood, Episkopalyen’lerin karşısında aşırı bir Presbiteryen yorumun savunucusu konumundadır. Bu Presbiteryen tutumun içeriği anlaşıldıkça, yeniçağ başlarında yoğun olarak hissedilen Presbiteryen-Episkopalyen uzlaşmazlığının bir Đskoç kimliğinin oluşumunda nasıl da önemli bir yere sahip olduğu ortaya çıkar.
Calderwood bu tartışmalara bir son verebilmek için tarihe özel bir önem atfetmiştir. Fakat unutulmaması gereken nokta geçmişteki öncül olayların sadece Đlahi bir yönlendirme neticesinde ortaya çıkmış olduklarının bilincine varmaktır. Bu yüzden eğer onlardan faydalanmak isteniyorsa, bu olaylarda açıkca görüldüğü düşünülen bir takım dini ve ahlaki yaptırımların dürüstçe kabul edilmesi ve yaşamın her alanına uygulanması gerekmektedir. Bu da Presbiteryenliktir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: David Calderwood, Reformasyon, On Yedinci Yüzyıl,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Even though one feels like experiencing the end of the world while writing a thesis, I am undoubtedly assured at the moment that it is only a small part of achieving greater things in life. But, if memory for a historian is nothing less than breathing, he becomes more willing to make it a perpetual reminder of the experience. So, I would here like to express my thanks to the people who have already deserved to be remembered in the future.
My family has always been and will remain to be in my heart and mind whenever I intend doing something. I have done everything only to make them proud of me. My mom, my dad and my sister have all the time supported my aspirations. So, I would like to thank them for all they are, and for all they have done to me.
I should also give my thanks to a special and beautiful girl in my life, Yeliz, without whose unselfish love I could not be where I am now. She is the first person who has not only encouraged me in my decision to be an academician, but always motivated me with her endless patience and kind heart as well. I am really grateful and indebted to her amazing efforts to provide me with necessary strength to overcome all hardships in my life. I believe that her being so loving and understanding will always be my great inspiration.
I have also been lucky enough to have some special friends. I’d like in the first place to thank Fatih who has been a great friend and taught me so much with his
deep intellectual knowledge so far. Hopefully, his friendship lasts forever. Indebted I am also to Yucel for his kindly and close friendship, who will certainly remain to be one of my best friends outside the academy. With Guney I shared not only a class and a flat. In his absence, Ankara becomes less enjoyable and endurable. Not to be forgotten are Sertaç Kurt, Ümit Bayık, Uğur Çetin and Cumhur Bekar, who have in different times and without complaint listened to the modest speculations of my mind. I haven’t also missed the chance to make new friends like Polat Safi, Alphan Akgül, Selim Tezcan, Yasir Yılmaz, Faruk Yaslıçimen, Harun Yeni, Cemal Bölücek, Seda Erkoç, Fatma Özden Mercan and Emrah Sefa Gürkan.
Besides my friends, I express my gratitude to Cadoc Leighton for his helpful supervision of my M.A. thesis. With his new methodologies and ideas in historiography, it has been sometimes difficult and sometimes nice to see myself improving both in perspective and knowledge. Special thanks to other members of my thesis committee, Paul Latimer and Berrak Burçak, who have been supportive with their comments during the examining of my final work. And to Oktay Özel, I thank for his friendship, trust and support in our depressed times, which makes him more than a lecturer in our department.
And, finally, a special place in my acknowledgements goes to the kind and helpful staff of Bilkent Library, who helped me through subscribing to one of the world’s most fascinating databases, EEBO, without which it would be unlikely to reach all the primary sources used in my dissertation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT... iii ÖZET ... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... vii TABLE OF CONTENTS... ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ... 1CHAPTER 2: CALDERWOOD’S UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY... 13
2.1 The Political and the Religious Context ... 17
2.2 The Meaning of History in the Early Modern Period ... 24
2.3 The Protestant Formation of Historical Studies... 29
2.4 Humanist Legacies in Calderwood’s Works... 39
2.5 Antiquarianism... 44
CHAPTER 3: “THE EXTERNAL WORSHIP OF GOD, AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH ARE LIKE HIPPOCRATES TWINS” ... 48
CHAPTER 4: “HAVE WEE NOT NEED TO FEAR THE BURNING OF OUR OWNE HOUSE, WHEN OURNEIGHBOURS HOUSE IS IN FIRE?”: IMAGINING THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCH ... 81
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION... 107
BIBLIOGRAPHY... 112
1.1 Writings of David Calderwood (1575-1650) ... 113 1.2 Other Primary Sources Used in the Text ... 114 2. Secondary Sources ... 114
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Many seventeenth-century historians of all sorts have, until recently, tended to mark this century as constituting a climax, albeit variously viewed. This century was defined as a battle ground where capitalism and feudalism, revolution and traditional, secularization and religion, constitutionalism and authoritarianism, and so on, fought each other for a future supremacy. These dichotomies were held to offer the best explanations of what was to be observed in the period. Moreover, in nearly all of these accounts there were champions of the future, the supporters of capitalism, revolution, secularism and constitutionalism, pitted against those tied to a dying past.
However, thanks to recently developed methodologies in history writing, a more critical and detailed analysis has been substituted for these simplifying and failing explanations of the period. Old conclusions are constantly being interrogated and subjected to new enquiries, often giving convincing revisionist insights. In the case of Britain, for example, the studies of J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner1
1See, for a grasp of his ideas, J.G.A Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: essays on political thought and history (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500-1800 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); for Quentin Skinner, see The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Also for a comprehensive analysis of Skinner’s theory of history, see James Tully (ed.), Meaning and context : Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).
have shown that it is impossible to give an account of the history of ideas through a straightforward use of above-mentioned classifications. In their view, early modern British political thought was a body of competing discourses, each requiring to be placed in historical contexts. Then again, J.C.D. Clark re-described British society up to the mid-nineteenth century as highly religious, monarchical and aristocratic.2 Conrad Russel also sought the causes of English Civil War not in the economic and the dependent social history, but in the religious and political strife of the period.3 Thus, in contrast to the findings of earlier whiggish historians of early modern Britain, these leading historians, as well as their followers, offer a less teleological view of the period, focusing more on contextual research than did earlier abstract and proggresivist accounts. One of the most crucial insight of these new approaches was an emphasis on the continuing and pervasive role of religion in all the political, social and cultural conflicts of the time.
Scotland’s history in the early modern period can certainly support this. As this thesis illustrates, the arguments and debates in Scotland during the seventeenth century require interpretation from the religious and political context of the period. The establishment of the Reformation in Scotland in 1560 opened a new era in Scottish history, in which all the strata of society had to adapt to changing circumstances. This new experience, of Europe and the British Isles, has recently been analysed under the concept of confessionalism.4 This is indeed a useful
2 It is possible to see these three elements scattered throughout the study of J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660-1832: religion, ideology and politics during the ancien regime, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), see especially 26-30.
3
See the works of Conrad Russell, (ed.) The Origins of the English Civil War (London: Macmillan, 1981); Unrevolutionary England, 1603-1642 (London; Ronceverte, WV: Hambledon Press, 1990); and his The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
4 The concept was developed by two notable writers. See Wolfgang Reinhard, “Pressures towards Confessionalization? Prolegomena to a Theory of the Confessional Age” in The German
Reformation: the essential readings, (ed.) C. Scott Dixon, 169-192 (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). And, Heinz Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergency of Early
concept as long as it is supported by further study of particular cases. In Scotland, the Reformers and the defenders of older religious commitments strove with each other to rule the country and preserve the social order. However, division was more complex than this. One must take into account the existence and various expectations of numerous bigger and smaller groups in Reformed Scotland. Nevertheless, ‘Presbyterians’ and ‘Episcopalians’ will be given pre-eminence as designations throughout this thesis, as these groupings were perceived to constitute the major participants in the religious and political struggles during the first half of the seventeenth-century.
It will become clear that the debates emerged from the specific Scottish experience of Reformation in 1560 were highly significant in the process of the establishment of a changed Scottish identity. The Reformation was not a smooth transition from Catholicism to Protestantism. Primarily, it necessitated a redefinition of the relationship between church and state, undoubtedly the basic institutions of the society. However, the clash between them should not be understood in terms of the traditional accounts of the secularization process. There was no immediate experience of a separation of these institutions in the government of the nation. Rather, the Reformation created an historical context in which the relationship between church and state was constantly redefined, without any tendency in any one’s thought to exclude the one or the other from the effective government of the country.5 The ideas about church and state became so
Modern Society: essays in German and Dutch history (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1992). This concept was, with further clarifications, applied to Britain by Clark, English Society. For an understanding of the complex character of arguments used in creating confessional ideologies, see a recent study by Irena Dorota Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation, 1378-1615 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
5 Julian Goodare, State and Society in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 173-213.
interrelated that it is hardly imaginable to consider describing notions of one institution without the other.
The headings, Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism, serve as a good starting point in finding out the general and specific characteristics of the tension spoken of here. Confessional society developed two distinct views about church/state relations, especially prominent after the Reformation. The struggle between them did much to shape not only Scottish, but British politics as a whole, as the two monarchies drew close especially after the Union of 1603.6 From their respective solutions to the problem arouse two different worldviews, which became more and more incompatible during the reign of James VI and I. After the Union of 1603, the policies of King James made it more likely, and more visibly likely, that Scotland would follow a path in these matters, which meant increased conformity to English church and state organization. The result was a war of pamphlets, in which the acceptability or unacceptability of that course was argued.
One of the leading defenders of radical Presbyterian cause and protagonist of the unacceptability of this tendency was David Calderwood. Calderwood and his writings are the main topic of this thesis. His writings give us a good illustration of what has been spoken of above. Although his contributions both to the writing of the history of the Scottish Reformation and to the historiographical tradition that came from it have been appreciated, it is still unfortunate to be able to note the lack of any systematic analysis of his writings. Throughout his life he committed himself to the belief that the only path to Christian truth was a strict adherence to the achievements of the Reformation fathers. He defined this true belief as Calvinist
6 Charles W.A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6-21.
Presbyterianism, established by the efforts of John Calvin, John Knox and Andrew Melville.
In notes in the Wodrow Society’s nineteenth-century edition of Calderwood’s
History of the Kirk of Scotland, a family tree was given, tracing his ancestors back
to the medieval period7, but nothing much was known about his early life. Much of the biographical information focuses on the period after his becoming a minister of Crailing, in Roxburghshire in 1604. Moreover, as Alan R. MacDonald pointed out in his short article on the formative years of Calderwood, the three major reference sources giving direct information about his life, namely the Fasti Ecclesiae
Scoticanae (the major printed source for the parish ministry in Scotland), Dictionary of National Biography and Who’s Who in Scottish History based their
accounts on the material, in the “Life of David Calderwood” included in Wodrow Society’s edition of his great work.8 It is also possible to add to this list a recent entry provided by Vaughan T. Wells in the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography.9 Though he adds to the material for these sources some more offered by letters and diaries, he introduces nothing new about his life. MacDonald mentions a further source for the life of Calderwood, which is an anonymous draft biography in the Grant Suttie Muniments, deposited, a part of a collection from Messrs John C. Brodie WS, with the Scottish Record Office in 1962.10 Noting that it was written in 1724, MacDonald ranks it as the least helpful among the sources.
7
T. Thomson and D. Laing, “Geneaological Table and Notices of the Family of Calderwood” in The History of The Kirk of Scotland, 8 vols. David Calderwood (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842-9), 8:xxi-xxiv
8
Alan R. MacDonald, “David Calderwood: The Not So Hidden Years, 1590-1604.” Scottish Historical Review 74 (1995): 69-74.
9 Vaughan T. Wells, “Calderwood, David (c. 1575-1650).” Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press (2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4374 (accessed 4 Aug 2007)
10
Due to this lack of reliable material concerning his childhood and adolescence, nothing can be said convincingly about his life until he graduated Edinburgh University on 12 August 1593. He was presumed to have been eighteen at the time of his graduation and said to have been born, the second son of William Calderwood, in 1575. He was educated initially at the grammar school and then at the University of Edinburgh until 1593. His education before and after graduation in Edinburgh is worth mentioning. For, there he was taught by Charles Ferme, later minister of Fraserburgh, who had attended to the class instructed by Robert Rollock, the founder of the town’s college in Edinburgh. Thus, it is not hard to guess the sources which fed Calderwood’s radical stance against the policies of King James VI and I. During the 1590s, Edinburgh was the very place for ministers who wanted to involve themselves in ecclesiastical politics.11
This political and ecclesiastical radicalism became more apparent after he was appointed minister of Crailing, near Jedburgh in Roxburghshire, in December 1604. From the outset he strictly opposed to the systematic attempts of King James to introduce episcopacy into the Church of Scotland. In the struggle against the imposition of a constant moderator in 1606 he voted against the practice. Similarly, he resisted an episcopal visitation by James Law, bishop of Orkney, in 1608. Finally, as a result of putting his signature to a protestation in 1617, which took place after his resistance to Episcopal practices imposed by the crown during that decade of contention, the 1610s, he was summoned to appear in London, deprived of his charge and then banished.
The reason for this was his strict adherence to the radical teachings of John Knox and Andrew Melville. He argued in a similar fashion to Andrew Melville,
11
when the reforming champion was urged to express his opinions about the relationship of church and state. Like Andrew Melville, Calderwood implied in his defence in 1617 before the court, presided by the king himself, that the king should be seen ‘as but God’s sillie vassal’ and acknowledge the priority and supremacy of the church over state.12 He accordingly rejected any notion of Episcopalianism or Erastianism, both of which emphasised the authority and dominance of the crown over the church in ecclesiastical policies. He was of the opinion that there were two kingdoms in Scotland, that of Christ and that of the Stuarts. They should work together in mutual and peaceful understanding to establish the social order that advanced the kingdom of Christ. The decisions and policies of the crown should answer the requirements of the doctrine and discipline of the Kirk.
Soon after his defence of radical Presbyterian views in front of the king, he was, unsurprisingly, banished. He went to Holland, where he resided until the death of King James in 1625. These years of banishment proved fruitful and greatly increased his threatening influence, since he began publishing treatises and pamphlets, directed against royal policy.13 In exile, he published some of his most famous works, among which the Altare Damascenum (1625) retained substantial importance for later generations. Its purpose was to attack the claims of the dominant ecclesiastical polity of England. He set out to prove the deficiencies of prelatical church organization through a close examination of the apostolic church, contemporary developments and the achievements of the Reformation.
However, before turning to this systematic and scholarly examination of the English church and her practices, he wrote several other pamphlets and treatises, as
12 David Calderwood, The History of The Kirk of Scotland, vol.7 (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1845), 263.
13 S. A. Burrel, “The Covenant Idea as a Revolutionary Symbol: Sotland, 1596-1637.” Church History 27 (1958): 338-350.
already noticed. For example, the Perth Assemblie, of 1619, argued the unacceptability of the Five Articles that gathering introduced in 1618. They signified conformity with the English Church. When one notes also his other writings as a whole, one immediately detects a common theme or intention in them. They constitute a sustained assault on religious innovation. Here, in a short list of his other influential works, one notes the same issues raised again and again: A
solution of Doctor Resolutus, his resolutions for kneeling (1619); The speach of the Kirk of Scotland to her beloved children (1620); Parasynagma Perthense et iuramentum Ecclesiae Scoticanae et A.M. Antitamicamicategoria (1620); A defence of our arguments against kneeling in the act of receiving the sacramentall elements of bread and wine impugned by Mr. Michelsone(1620); An exhortation of the particular kirks of Christ in Scotland to their sister kirk in Edinburgh (1624); The pastor and the prelate (1628). All of these works were published in the Low
Countries.
However, Calderwood is much better known as a historian than for his polemic in this form. This was due to his great collection of primary sources and his writing of a great history of the Reformation in Scotland with their aid.14 His collections of the necessary material for his history and their integration into his comprehensive study can best be seen in a posthumous edition of the nineteenth century. The fullest form of the corpus of his writings of different periods and in different forms was offered in the shape of eight volumes issued by the Wodrow Society, from 1842 to 1849.15 According to the editors of these eight volumes, Calderwood did not, at first, mean to publish his writings in the form of a history.
14 David G. Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland: The History of an Idea, 1560-1638 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1986), 144-150.
15 William Ferguson, The Identity of the Scottish Nation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 111.
He initially set out to establish a collection of materials for personal references, an activity which began before his exile and continued until his death. At the beginning, Calderwood wrote 3136 pages, two thirds of which have since been lost. But then, it is said, he decided to compile a second text “contracted and digested in better order” out of this first one.16 His intention was to secure against the possibility of losing the first one. Its length was 2013 pages and it was given the name, Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, beginning at Mr Patrick Hammiltoun, and
ending with the Death of James Sixt. This was also the version on which the
Wodrow Society based its later edition. However, the editors added, unchanged, a preamble which they found in the mostly lost first version of 3136 pages.17 Finally, from the second version came another version of 838 pages, which were published as The True History of the Church of Scotland in 1678. It was this version which the “author desireth onlie to be communicat to the use and benefite of others”. It seems impossible to give an exact date of completion of any of these texts, as the author himself never indicated these dates. We may say that they were the products of a continuous process which began during 1620s and ended with Calderwood’s death in 1650.18 The value of this activity was recognised in Calderwood’s own lifetime. He received a pension of £800 per year from the General Assembly through the 1640s, from the signing of the National Covenant in 1638. The Covenanters wanted a complete history of the Scottish Reformation, reflecting their views, which would then be published and put to public use.
During the years of the Covenanting movement, Calderwood worked diligently with the architects of the revolution, such as Archibald Johnston of
16 Calderwood, History of The Kirk, vol. 8, 129.
17 Thomson and Laing, “The History of the Church of Scotland Complied by Mr. David Calderwood” in History by Calderwood, vol. 8, 133.
18
Wariston. At least these two men worked together to refute the claims of those who opposed their cause.19 A Re-Examination of the Five Articles (1636) and Ane
Answere to Mr J. Forbes of Corse his Peaceable Warning [Against the Covenant]
(1638) continued its defence against its opponents. In 1640 or 1641 he was presented to the parish of Pencaitland in East Lothian. Apart from the fact that he attended the meetings of the General Assembly until 1649, nothing can be satisfactorily said about his activities during this period. He no doubt spent his final years by, occupied with the writing of the History. In any case, by 23 October 1650 Calderwood had retired to Jedburgh, where he lay “seik in bodie but whole and perfyte in memorie”.20 On 29 October he died there and left behind him an extensive library which was bequeathed to his relatives. Then, in 1765 William Calderwood of Polton presented the manuscripts of the minister's history to the British Museum. Other collections of papers were given to Robert Wodrow, and were purchased by the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh in 1792.
We may here conclude this life of the Scottish minister, whose writings are the subject matter of this thesis. Throughout this study, nearly all of Calderwood’s writings will be mentioned in order to elucidate the main characteristics of the ecclesiological and political arguments which disturbed Scotland during the 1620s and 30s. His writings remain important for those who reflect on the complex relations between church and state, and society in general. The purpose of the following three chapters is to help reveal and define the kind of identity which created and maintained a confessional state like Scotland in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is necessary to follow the arguments spoken of here within a specific and historical context. The Scottish Reformed state came into existence in
19 Ibid. 20
the circumstances established after the Reformation in 1560. However, an early expression of the Scottish Reformed identity became a more complicated one by virtue of the succession of a Protestant king to the throne. Moreover, problems in the relationship between church and state became mingled with those problems that emerged from the Union of the Crowns in 1603. It was then that it became an urgent task for Episcopalians and Presbyterians to advance their arguments, within their respective discourses, now directed to a wider audience.
In order to explain the way in which Calderwood argued and constructed his radical Presbyterian stance, the first chapter will look at the aspects of his history writing. For, as we shall see, the tool of historical argumentation increasingly became the constitutive element in his formulation of his religious and political identity. His History of the Kirk of Scotland, which was the title of Wodrow Society’s edition, and which will be used here for references, and other historical treatments which appear in his ostensibly ecclesiological and political writings operated to inculcate basic religious and moral duties. The chapter aims at providing the reader with a general view of the historiographical framework into which he placed his moral instruction. This involves giving a general overview of the age’s historiography. By references to earlier traditions, such as those of medieval and humanist history writing, the contributions of the Reformation, as it built on these previous understandings, will be marked out. Then it will be easier to see that general framework, by use of which, Calderwood expressed his arguments in support of what he held to be the true definitions of the church and the state.
Related to his notion of the true church, the second chapter will attempt to elucidate the dominant elements in Calderwood’s vision of the Scottish Reformed Church. Here, it may be possible to see how he imagined and constructed a Scottish
past, in which Scotland experienced the truest form of Reformation. It became a religious and thus moral duty of a true Christian constantly to reiterate in practice what the founding fathers of Reformation had achieved. The Church could not be left to the deteriorating effects of time, worldly man and his worldly politics. At the time of Reformation, Scotland had experienced that unity in doctrine and discipline which marked the Church of Christ. It was void of any manipulation and adulterating influence by foreign churches, especially the Church of England. Thus, being a true Christian necessitated a strict commitment to this tradition.
Finally, this matter of the distinctive features and experiences of the Scottish Reformation bring us to the last topic. The third chapter will be concerned with the arguments that constituted a patriotic defence of the Kirk. It will be seen here that the commonly held assumptions among Protestants about the universal character of particular, national reformations came to adapt themselves when viewed with the particular and historical context of Scotland. This was accelerated especially after the Union of the Crowns, when the characteristics and traditions of the Scottish Church began to be challenged by the increasingly visible policies of the king, to bring Scottish Church organization and rites into conformity with English ones. The open declaration of the James’s sympathy for the Episcopalian forms of the English Church was equated by Calderwood and like-minded Presbyterians with degeneracy into the sin of idolatry. Thus, it again became a religious and moral duty of Presbyterians to embrace the patriotic tradition given by the Scottish Reformation experience. Scotland had to now struggle with two great enemies, Rome and England. Here was a further stage of the redefinition of Scotland’s religious and national identity in response to changing circumstances.
CHAPTER 2
CALDERWOOD’S UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY
It is surprising to see, among the contemporary revisionist general histories of the British Reformations, a comparative lack of the same enthusiasm for reconsideration of individual figures in, particularly those relevant to intellectual history in this period. There has been neither a systematic analysis of seventeenth-century Scottish historiography nor, more generally, biographies of prominent intellectual figures.21 The radical presbyterian David Calderwood, 1575- 1650, wrote his The History of the Church of Scotland in the first half of the seventeenth century. Although, when compared to treatment in older Whiggish histories, this period has been described in recent accounts more carefully, Calderwood and his writings have been left, together with other less handled figures of the period and their work, either to teleological examinations, or to the less than careful and hasty references of revisionists of all sorts. In the former the whole century is dismissed
21
There were of course exceptions to this. See the works of David G. Mullan, Scottish Puritanism, 1590-1638 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Episcopacy in Scotland: the History of an Idea, 1560-1638 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd, 1986); Roger A. Mason, (ed.) John Knox and the British Reformations (Brookfield Vt.: Ashgate, 1998) and his Scots and Britons: Scottish political thought and the union of 1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); for biographical study of the period’s intellectual figures, see John Coffey, Politics, Religion and The British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Rochester NY: Boydell Press, 2006).
as full of religious darkness, a prologue to the supposed subsequent victory of modern constitutionalism. In the latter, Calderwood and like minded writers are still minimised on account of their radical, polemical and controversialist styles, as if they thus contributed less to reassessments.
The present chapter will not take into consideration how the teleological accounts of Whig historians depicted the Reformation period in Scotland. It will examine and explain the pattern of Calderwood’s history of the Reformation with greater detail than the limited references that have hitherto been presented. It will be pointed out that Calderwood appealed to a more complicated and sophisticated historiographical tradition than has been thought. It is true that his account of the Reformation in Scotland was more radical, polemical and controversial, but he was not unaware of the history writing traditions of earlier and contemporary authors. Nor can he be accused of being extremely partial or proving less a historian than a polemicist. When considered within the political, religious and intellectual context of the period in which he wrote, it will be clear that his thought was expressed reasonably and within a historiographical pattern which was shaped by protestant and humanist understanding of history, which also made him an important representative of the canonical historians of the presbyterians.22
His history can be considered among the last conventional religious narratives, with few exceptions before the nineteenth century Evangelical revival.23 For Robert Bailie, minister and author, Calderwood was one of as “good enough authorities”, who had a special place in his intellectual formation as a “living
22 William Ferguson, The Identity of the Scottish Nation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 112.
23 David Allan, Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 166.
magazine of our all Ecclesiastick History”.24 Samuel Rutherford, the divine, political theorist, best remembered as the writer of famous Lex, Rex, made an ample use of Calderwood’s historical framework during and after the Covenanting Movement of 1630s, and his keen interest in the idea of idolatry, which basically helped to construct this historical framework especially in times of political and religious instability.25 Thomas M’Crie, in the nineteenth century, continued to make extensive use of Calderwood’s history. Calderwood’s history is important both for its preservation of many valuable sources and its reflection of a pattern of religious historiography, which is well worth recovery.
One of the reasons however for perceiving his history as underdeveloped or controversial, but nothing more than that, may be the lack of an introduction to his work, explaining his motives in writing history. He has been often condemned as a compiler having no historiographical view of his own, but only those of his sources26; or as “less a historian than editor of an enormous collection of constitutional documents and first hand accounts from a cloud of witnesses”.27
It was true as he himself said in one of his manuscripts that “the History of The Church of Scotland, collected out [of] Maister Knox his Historie, and his Memorialles gathered for the continuation for his historie, out of Mr. James Melville his Observations, Mr. John Davidson hid Diarie, the Acts of the Generall Assemblies, and the Acts of Parliament, and out of severall Proclamations, and scrolles of divers, and comprehendeth an Historie…” But this never makes him a mere editor unaware of the history writing traditions. For, like many other historians
24 Robert Baillie, The epistle dedicatory to An Historicall Vindication of the Government of the Church of Scotland (Brasen Serpent: London, 1646).
25 Coffey, Politics, Religion, 191-192. 26 Mullan, Episcopacy, 144.
27 David Reid, “Prose After Knox” in The History of Scottish Literature, vol. 3 (ed.) Cairns Craig and Ronald D. S. Jack, 3.vols. (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1998), 189.
in the early modern period, the writing of history meant for Calderwood the rewriting of histories, and choosing convenient narratives, with his own style and world view.28
The other reason for the negligence of a thorough analysis of his work was probably a result of the belief that this period in Scotland was relatively lacking in literary achievement. When compared to the literary fertility of England and France in this period, Scotland seemed less venturesome in writing styles, and indeed uncreative.29 However, such a comparison proves erroneous because the writers of the period and their own motives for writing had priorities different from those of later critics. This pessimistic view was also furthered by a mere-concentration on English-language writing. But, it is unjust to neglect the writings of some neo-Latin poets like Arthur Johnston, and of some other’s using Gaelic vernacular as a literary language. So, this should not be an excuse for literary critics or historians to disregard the works of this period with an assertion that they had nothing of interest to offer by way of style and pattern, but only restlessness and prejudice in their minds.
The extension of this thinking seems to become a more general, modern prejudice against religious conflict, for the modern reader was encouraged to put aside the works of Calderwood, who lived in a so-called darkened age of religious faction.30 Yet, the task should be not to eliminate his history from one’s sight in favour of more agreeably moderate ones, but to put all in their proper contexts. As Maurice Lee indicated in his handling of John Spottiswood, a royalist and an important Episcopalian in the first half of the seventeenth century, the
28
Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 167.
29 Reid, “Prose,”, 184.
30 Margo Todd, “Bishops in the Kirk: William Cowper of Galloway and the puritan episcopacy of Scotland” Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004): 300-312.
“judiciousness of [his] tone and [his] moderation in the characterization of individuals are not the same thing as impartiality of spirit”.31 By 1630 Scotland saw a voluminous publication of pamphlets, and they included many literary styles. As one author has recently pointed out that “the rejection of the value of early modern religious writing is so often justified on the basis of an enlightened modernity”.32
2.1 The Political and the Religious Context
In Scotland the form of religious controversy grew out of the nature of the Reformation achieved in 1560.33 Unlike the Reformation in England in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, the Scottish Reformation was a result of an act of rebellion against the state. Thus, the relative easiness in England where the episcopal structure of church jurisdiction and the idea of ‘ceasaro-papistry’ were widely accepted, was not echoed in Scotland. Scottish opinion became instead more radical with regard both to church and state from the very beginning.
Against this background, interpretations of the Scottish past became an important element in establishing a religious and national identity.34 They will be examined in the coming chapters. At the moment, it is important to say that Calderwood, in his own particular religious and political context, recovered and reproduced myths that already had a long history in Scotland. The church and state question in Scotland during the Middle Ages was generally viewed in an inter-dynastic political perspective. In the various writers’ accounts, the church of Scotland was from its origins historically established as independent from the
31
Maurice Lee Jr, “Archbishop Spottiswoode as Historian” The Journal of British Studies 13 (1973): 138-150.
32 C. R. A. Gribben, “The Literary Cultures of the Scottish Reformation” The Review of English Studies, New Series 57 (2006): pp 64-82.
33 Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London: Pimlico, 1991,1992), 186.
34 For the role of religion in the establishment of early modern national identities, see Colin Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic, 1600-1800 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
suzerainty claims of Canterbury and York. The purpose of their writings was to trace the evidence by which the church of Scotland could be defined “a special daughter of the see of Rome”. They were thus freed from any assertion of English domination.
With such a medieval heritage, it is be obvious that the Reformation would recycle these previous myths or languages, by adjusting them to new circumstances, sometimes imitating and sometimes abandoning unwanted parts. In Michael Lynch’s formulation, the writings of this period stuck themselves to historical myths, with a “one-eyed reading of the Reformation and the legacy of Buchanan in censuring the kings”.35 There were two remarkable figures who were first in the field. John Knox and George Buchanan would be the founding fathers of reformed tradition’s interpretation of the Scottish past. Buchanan, in Calderwood’s eyes, “was ingenuous and upright, not givin to avarice and bribes, so did he never repent afterward of anie thing he had writtin…”.36
John Knox was interested less in the distant past and more in recent achievements of Reformation. He failed to attribute some distinct role to Scotland in salvation history. But, this did not lower the esteem given to Knox, as he “was the light and confort of our kirk, a mirrour of godlinesse, a paterne to ministers for holie life, soundnesse in doctrine, and boldnesse in reproving vice”.37 It was rather Buchanan who, with anti-papist and anti-English sentiments, set out to re-evaluate the historical traditions of Scotland. Yet, as he was more concerned with the urgent political problems in a different context, than with mere theological issues of his
35 Lynch, Scotland, 264.
36 Calderwood, History, vol. 2 (1843), 466. 37
age, says William Ferguson, “presbyterian church notion comes from it is certainly not from Buchanan’s history”.38
It can be seen from Calderwood’s history, that is, when the bitter Presbyterian-Episcopalian controversy was accelerated during the reign of James VI and I that a special ‘Presbyterian notion’ of history established itself. Leaving aside the motivations of Buchanan like philology, Calderwood looked to Scottish historical myths with a keen Presbyterian interest which shaped his emphasis on different points. He sought the ancient Scots chiefly in order to indicate their ‘Ethnick Religion’. Nevertheless, in the early parts of his history he followed Buchanan and his medieval predecessors where the Scots were claimed to come
frome these north parts, Galeacia (in Northern Spain), and other countries adjacent, our progenitors came to Ireland (Major Scotland) either because the barren countrie was not able to susteine so populous a natioun, or to eschew thraldome under the Carthaginians, Romans, and other conquerours.39
They came to Britain before the birth of Christ and their first king was Fergus mac Ferchar, whose reign was dated not to 330 BC, as it appeared in Buchanan, but to 33 BC. It is not clear however whether this statement was due to a scribal error or his critical mind.40
There was a further difference from Buchanan, where Calderwood spoke of the first Christian king of Scotland. Like Buchanan, Calderwood accepted the twenty-seventh king of Scots, Donald, as the first Christian ruler of his people, but strictly rejected the notion that he received instruction.
Yitt where it is said that this king sent messengers to Pope Victor, to crave that some learned men might be sent to instruct himself, his wife and his childrein, I take it to be a mere fable invented by monkes, in time of
38 Ferguson, Identity, 107.
39 Calderwood, History, vol.1 (1842), 2. 40
blindnesse, to amplifie the Pope’s apostalick power, or to imitate the British writers, who had fained the like before of Lucius, king of the Brittons.41
There was also the notion of Culdees, those ancient monastic communities, which would emerge as crucial to the Protestant account of early Scottish experience.42 They had not been much emphasised by the available medieval chronicles. They were, in Calderwood’s hands, the true Presbyterians who taught the people how to worship, being “holie and religious men, exercised in teaching, prayer, meditatioun, and reading, for which exercises they were called Culdei, that is Cultores Dei...”43
Then, there came the Roman superstition, sprouting from Augustine being sent to Britain, and the triumph of Roman ceremonies and papal authority resulted in the darkening of religion.44 So, for Calderwood the Reformation was a cutting away the medieval superstition in the time of which the true believers, like Lollards or Waldenses, were bitterly persecuted. “[T]he Lord made the light of his truthe to shyne to some few, when the prophesie and sound of preaching of the word in publick had decayed”.45 Such, in brief, was the way, in which Calderwood presented Christianity and its course until the Reformation era. He then passed to the death of Patrick Hamilton who suffered martyrdom in 1528, a victim “the cruelty executed in the beginning of King James the fifth his reigne”. After his death “many moved to inquire into the truth of his points”.46 His account of the course of the Reformation ran to the death of King James VI. Although his bias was visible, he developed his thesis, as it will be shown, in a reasonable way and a sophisticated method.
41 Calderwood, History, vol. 1, 34.
42 Edward J. Cowan and Richard J. Finlay, (eds.) Scottish History: The Power of the Past (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), 115.
43 Calderwood, History, vol.1, 39. 44 Ibid., 42-49.
45 Ibid., 51. 46
The contemporary political and religious context for the debates that shaped the character and articulation of Calderwood’s history was mostly that of the reign of James VI and I. It was during his reign that Calderwood, it seems, collected his materials, for use in hot debates, which increased after the Union of Crowns in 1603. For example, since Presbyterians were challenged by the assertion that the early years of reformation in Scotland saw an episcopal structure, which was opposed only after the arrival of some scholars, such as Andrew Melville, from Geneva, Calderwood’s construction of history was shaped accordingly. He claimed that “the pastors of the Kirk of Scotland had begunne to roote out bishoprie, and to condemne it in their assemblies, before these Scollers came from Geneve…”47, and thus, established a continuity. In his mind, the true church in Scotland had always been governed by presbyteries both in the times of Culdees and in the times of Reformers after 1560, in a full observation of the Scottish past.48
James proclaimed himself to be the first king of Great Britain. From that date he formulated a policy which convinced the radical Presbyterians in Scotland that piety and sound religious order, as well as the kingdom and commonwealth, were under serious threat. For these Presbyterians, things had worked relatively well since James’s first proclamation of King of Scotland in 1567 at least until the year of 1596. After this date a common view took root and figured the subsequent controversialists’ mind, that 1596 was a crisis year for the Church of Scotland, after which it saw the quickened entrance of corruption. Calderwood remarked in his history:
This yeere is a remarkable yeere to the Kirk of Scotland, both for the beginning and for the end of it. The Kirk of Scotland now came to her
47 Calderwood, The Pastor and the Prelate or Reformation and Conformitie, (Holland?, n.p., 1528), 47-48.
48
perfectioun, and the greatest puritie that ever she atteaned unto, both in doctrine and discipline, so that her beautie was admirable to forraine kirks.49 Thus he set the discourse for discussion of subsequent events, when “some thornie questions in points of discipline were devised, whereby his authority was in many points called in doubt”.50 James began to commit the greatest sin by erecting an episcopate which signified the beginning of corruption. Indeed, the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne created great problems of jurisdiction and governance. James resolved to alter the way the Scottish Church worshipped and was governed, and Scotland began to be assimilated to English religious and state traditions.51
Debate began with discussion of the General Assembly held in 1610. It approved several articles, which were thought by Presbyterians unacceptable. They meant for the Presbyterians a return to the old papal corruptions, signalled by the fact that “soone after the dissolving of this Assemblie, three of them [prelates] went to England and were consecrate to the office of a bishop, whereof the Assemblie never dreamed”.52 The decision that the king should be asked to announce the yearly assemblies would indeed be painful for Presbyterians. Several Assemblies were granted but then postponed, so that they assembled only four times over the succeeding twenty-eight years.53The general Presbyterian notion as indicated by previous assemblies was that the Assembly should be called twice in a year. This implied for the Presbyterians in Scotland the waning of the assumption that James had once and for all endorsed the doctrinal and governmental sovereignty of the
49
Calderwood, History, vol. 5 (1844), 387. 50 Ibid., 388.
51 Mullan, Episcopacy, 151.
52 Calderwood, History, vol.7 (1845), 103. 53
Kirk of Scotland. For, “in these conclusions, anie man may see the government of the kirk altogether altered”.54
In fact, James was seeking to establish the notion of a ruler of the Kirk by divine right and an English conception of the relationship of church and state. Thus, he would be the godly prince, exercising his authority as the head of both church and state. He would be advised not by Presbyterians and their General Assemblies but by godly bishops who were occupied an office of apostolic origin with simplicity.55
This meant a refutation of the two kingdoms theory, namely the civil and spiritual, commonly held by Presbyterians at the time and which will be examined in the second chapter of this study. This, in turn, was a violation of the order and peace enjoyed in the kingdom and the commonwealth. But, a more serious attack on religious piety came in 1618 and 1621. At the General Assembly held at Perth in 1618, ‘The Articles of Perth’ had been enacted and they were ratified by the parliament in 1621. These articles included such changes in worship, that the Presbyterians saw the collapse of the Reformation confessed in Scotland since 1561.
In all of these calamities, Presbyterians perceived that religion in Scotland was in decline. They were also driven to engage in the production of a polemical literature, answered by Episcopalians. It was this political and literary context that led Calderwood to see things as he did. There appeared a stream of pamphlets, sermons and histories by various writers. The introduction of new forms of worship to the Scottish Church started a series of debates on ecclesiastical sovereignty,
54 Calderwood, History, vol 7, 103.
55 Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I” The Journal of British Studies 24 (1985): 169-207. There have been many studies on this topic held both in books and articles, which is impossible here to give all literature.
ceremonies, episcopacy, law and the patristic heritage of the Church56, and a new phase of the struggle to establish the doctrine, discipline and governance of the post-Reformation church in Scotland was begun.
The debates were not superficial nor on ephemeral topics. They had important religious and political implications, and the scope of discussion was extended. As Catholic and Protestant controversialists divided over the problematic of who possesses continuity with the ancient and true church, Protestants in both Kingdoms too began to compete on the issue of true reformation.57 Calderwood set out to explain his positions in these debates. He and his like minded colleagues, as a result of necessity, began to release some works for printing “after long waiting in silence… there being no other way left unto us”.58 What then came from his pen, whether in the form of pamphlet or of history, was far from being formless and senseless. Although they were published mostly out of the urgency of the times they had characteristics, which made it unacceptable to condemn them as the product of barbarous age.
2.2 The Meaning of History in the Early Modern Period
Before beginning to examine Calderwood’s work it is useful to point out that history in this period never enjoyed the freedom of a distinctively established discipline, as in our own century. It was mostly studied in the theology and law faculties. Throughout this century, as a result of the renaissance revival of the classical notion of history, it was also accepted a sub-discipline either of grammar or of rhetoric. Due to a lack of methodology, it never depicted itself as a science. History, when not a tool of divines and lawyers, was a branch of literature that
56 Prior, Defining, 3. 57 Ibid., 213. 58
included the elements of rhetoric, oratory and grammar. However, with the coming of the Protestant application of history which, sought to give the contemporary reader the original religious truth, it made some substantial gains.59The historical works produced in the early debates of Protestants and Catholics like the Centuries
of Magdeburg, the Annals as well as the writings of Melanchton made prominent
contributions to historical method, in addition to fulfilling their roles as histories of dogma.60
One should note that some humanists’ critical readings of the distant past, such as those of Valla and, in Scotland, Buchanan, revised received historical myths abandoning some fabulous narratives. This in fact helped to reanimate another classical assumption about ‘history proper’. It came to be held that history should be distinguished from poetry, at least by giving warrant to real events—mixed with prophecy and natural signs—and by avoiding the purely imaginary. Interestingly, Donald Kelley pointed out that as a result of educational reforms, some universities began to introduce professores historiarum, which signified, if not the establishment of distinct discipline, the achievement of a relative parity, not only with poetry, but also with theology and law.61
Lastly, it is also possible to mention one more gain of the period in the methodology of history visible in Scotland. Beginning with the example of John Knox, the convergence of history and antiquarianism became very helpful in writing ecclesiastical histories. The significance and method of antiquarian study of the past will be described later in this chapter. In brief, it can be said that the collection of archival sources, such as official documents and first hand testimonies,
59
Donald R. Kelley, “Historia Integra: Francois Baudouin and his Conception of History” Journal of the History of Ideas 25 (1964): 35-57.
60 Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation,1378-1615 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 4.
61
acquired priority in these histories. This material, which had been dismissed for not fitting well into historical narratives and making them boring, was now integrated.
Thus and in other ways, Scottish ecclesiastical historians like Calderwood reflected in their works some basic premises of the early modern understanding of history. Calderwood’s history, for example, had morally instructive lessons, which were strongly religious. It had a narrative which told the story of the ancient Scots and their religion, speaking of the arrival of Christianity in Scotland, the corrupted medieval era, and coming to the contemporary age the kindling of true Christianity with the Scottish Reformation. He shaped it with a vast collection of first hand accounts to give evidence for his account of the course of events which indicated that it was the revelation of God’s hand in every detail. So, one can trace many legacies inherited from different sources, used to construct a history, which may have been considered as less exciting than previous ones, but can not be said to have been void of methodology and purpose.
Calderwood united his various sources with a narrative, albeit limited, and with a method that integrated all of them to articulate a message, which might reasonably be called a Presbyterian religious truth. He understood the pragmatic function of history, established by the humanist understanding of it. Collecting documents thus was not an act of commemorative study; it aimed at communicating moral instruction. He articulated in his history a religious and moral truth, shaped by contemporary religious and political debates, his positions on which were justified by the past. His work can be seen as a “mirror of ecclesiastical history”.62 Thus, the urgent problems, encountered during the period, could easily be resolved
62 A similar notion was analysed within a Dutch context, which may be useful for seeing the parallels in history writing traditions. Charles H. Parker, “To the Attentive, Nonpartisan Reader: The Appeal to History and National Identity in the Religious Disputes of the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands” Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997): 57-78.
by reflecting just what had happened in similar occasions in the past. He had a message that was to be communicated to both his contemporaries and posterity. The nature of a “happie government” was to be displayed by true historical precedents in matters of religion “to be a matter of gratulation to the Godly, and to be admired and remembered by the posteritie, as the measure and example of their desires, when they shall be wishing for a religious and righteous King”.63 This feature shows his history as a product of a mind, concerned with what history meant for him and for the authors that he brought into his narrative. He was, in other words, contributing to a history of salvation.
. It was of crucial importance for Calderwood to make his case with reasonableness and truth. His presentation of the truth was through first-hand testimonies, confirmed by references not in the footnotes but within the text itself. This was a highly effective blending of a Protestant notion of sola scriptura, or the truth of the Word of God, with a humanist approach of going ad fontes to purge the truth of interpolations. Moreover, one should be careful not to think of the truth concerned in a modern fashion. Obtaining the truth, in the period, did not chiefly require distinguishing fiction from fact. In reproducing the older histories, there was a recovery of myths. It was a matter of conviction about which of these myths best served one’s historical account.
Prophecy, or at least the natural signs shown by God in times of error, for example, could reveal the religious truth and morality. Martyrs played a significant role as prophetic witnesses. Calderwood remarked:
That blessed martyr, Mr George Wishart …, was not only singularly learned in divinitie and humane sciences, bt also was so clearlie illuminated with the spirit of prophecie, that he saw not onlie things perteaning to himself, but also suche things as some touns and the whole realme afterward felt.64
63 Calderwood, Pastor and Prelate, 9. 64
Events were prophetic. After the glorious year, in 1596, of the Scottish Kirk, the “fearful eclipse” created a great horror and thus signified that “if the estats of bishops which then was in hatching continue long, it will not faile to bring on darkness and ignorance, atheisme and Poprie”.65 But there was much else in Calderwood’s history which was seen to speak to people of God’s providence. It was sometimes prophecy, sometimes earthquake, sometimes horrible deaths, and sometimes climate. He noted that, in 1617, just a year before his clash with the authorities, because of his opposition to royal policy, which would bring about his banishment to the Low Countries, there came a “vehement frost” which provoked “the admiration of aged men, who had never seene the like in their dayes”.66
It is obvious that one should think of the modern concept of historical truth or fact, with this feature of Calderwood’s writing in mind. However, the shaping components of this period’s understanding of history, namely Protestant and humanist, have been emphasised in recent years, precisely by taking into account what truth or fact consisted of in the period.67 One more characteristic of history writing in the early modern period, which has been little emphasised in discussing Scottish thought, is added here. This may be called initially, antiquarianism of the time. It was not a defect but a helpful method for presentation of truth. This may then serve to correct pejorative references to Calderwood’s history common in many books, even in our own century. An ample use of antiquarian sources in his writing was a result of the political and religious disturbance, which necessitated the
65 Calderwood, History, vol.5, 681-682. 66
Calderwood, History, vol.6 (1843), 688.
67 See Allan, Virtue, Learning; Michael Lynch, A. A. Macdonald, Ian B. Cowan, (eds.) The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History, and Culture Offered to John Durkan (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1994); John MacQueen, Humanism in Renaissance Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990).
